Popeyes’ Champagne-covered chicken wings are dipped in gold. Are they safe to eat?

Popeyes is celebrating its 3,000th restaurant by serving chicken wings coated in champagne and a batter of 24-karat gold at four locations. It’s not the first restaurant to try it – but is gold safe to eat? Popeyes / Business Wire

Popeyes is celebrating its 3,000th restaurant by serving chicken wings coated in champagne and a batter of 24-karat gold at four locations. It’s not the first restaurant to try it – but is gold safe to eat? Popeyes / Business Wire

If you’ve ever wanted to sink your teeth into a gold-coated chicken wing, now’s your chance — although it might require a bit of a drive for you to get your hands on one.

To celebrate the opening of its 3,000th restaurant, the fried chicken joint Popeyes Louisiana Kitchen announced it would serve up chicken wings dipped in Champagne and then coated in a batter of 24-karat gold, according to a news release from the company.

“We are thrilled to open our 3,000th restaurant and have even more guests enjoying our incredible fried chicken,” said Popeyes president Alex Santoro in the release. “We wanted to share this celebration with our fans, so our chefs cooked up something extra special for them. It’s a fun way for guests to celebrate this milestone right along with us.”

The wings are selling for $5 as part of a deal that includes six pieces, a side and a biscuit. But they’re only available at the following four locations:

Popeyes isn’t the first restaurant to coat its chicken in precious metal. In 2017, The Ainsworth in New York City introduced chicken wings soaked in a mixture of batters, including gold butter, for 24 hours and then dusted with gold flakes, The New York Daily News reported.

Those wings were a lot more expensive though, at $30 for 10 up to $1,000 for 50 of them (plus a bottle of Champagne).

But how safe is it to eat gold? Is it nutritious?

Well, it’s certainly not harmful, if it truly is gold and isn’t combined with any other metals, Food & Wine reported.

“Edible gold must be 23-24 carats,” dietitian Alexandra Oppenheimer said, according to the magazine. “It’s not the same gold you find in your jewelry, which may have other metals and can be toxic and dangerous if consumed.”